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The 'New Siberian Islands' (Russian: Новосиби́рские острова, Novosibirskiye Ostrova) are an archipelago, located to the North of the East Siberian coast between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea north of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic.
The New Siberian Islands proper, or Anzhu Islands, covering a land area of about 29,000 km², consist of

★ Kotelny Island (о. Коте́льный) 11,700 km² and

★ Faddeyevsky Island (о. Фадде́евский) 5,300 km²

★
★ which are linked by Bunge Land (земля́ Бу́нге) 6,200 km² (occasionally submerged by sea)

★ Novaya Sibir (о. Но́вая Сиби́рь) 6,200 km²

★ Belkovsky Island (о. Бельковский) 500 km²
To the south and nearer to the Siberian mainland lie the Lyakhovskiye Islands (6,100 km²):

★ Great Lyakhovsky Island (о. Большо́й Ля́ховский) 4,600 km²

★ Little Lyakhovsky Island (о. Ма́лый Ля́ховский) 1,325 km²

★ Stolbovoy Island (о. Столбово́й) 170 km²

★ Semyonovsky Island (о. Семёновский) 5km²
The small De Long Islands (228 km²) lie to the north-east of Novaya Sibir:

★ Jeannette Island (о. Жанне́тты)

★ Henrietta Island (о. Генрие́тты)

★ Bennett Island (о. Бе́ннетта)

★ Vilkitskogo Island (о. Вильки́цкого)

★ Zhokhova Island (о. Жо́хова)
Most of the archipelago is low-lying and consists of loose sediments. Its western part consists of limestone and slate. The highest altitude is 374 m (Mt. Malakatyn-Tas on Kotelny island).

Contents

Climate

History

Paleontology

References

Climate

The climate is arctic and severe. Snow cover is present for 9 months of the year.

★ Average temperature in January: −28°C to −31°C

★ Temperature in July: At the coasts icy arctic water lets the temperatures stay relatively low. Average maximum temperatures from +8°C to +11°C and average minimum temperatures from -3°C to +1°C. In the interior of the islands the average maximum temperatures in July are +16°C to +19°C and average minimum temperatures +3°C to +6°C.

★ Precipitation: up to 132 mm a year
Permafrost and underground ice are very common. The surface of the islands is covered with arctic tundra vegetation and numerous lakes.

History

The first news about the existence of the New Siberian Islands was brought by a Cossack Yakov Permyakov in the beginning of the 18th century. In 1712, a Cossack unit led by M. Vagin reached the Great Lyakhovsky Island. At the beginning of the 19th century, the islands were further explored by Yakov Sannikov, Matvei Gedenschtrom and others.
In 1808-1810 Yakow Sannikow and Matvei Gedenschtrom went to The New Siberian Islands on a cartographic expedition. Yakov Sannikov reported the sighting of a "new land" north of Kotelny in 1811. This became the myth of 'Zemlya Sannikova' or "Sannikov Land".
In 1886 Baron Eduard V. Toll, during his first visit to the New Siberian Islands thought that he had seen an unknown land north of Kotelny Island. He guessed that this was the so-called "Zemlya Sannikova"

Paleontology

Polar explorer and scientist Baron Eduard Von Toll paid a further visit to this island group in the spring of 1892, accompanied only by one Cossack and three natives. He travelled over the ice in sledges drawn by dogs and reached the south coast of Lyakhov Island, where made some very interesting discoveries.
Under a peat composed of water mosses covering what is described as the "perpetual ice" von Toll found fragments of willow and the bones of post-Tertiary mammals, like the shoulder-bone of a saber-toothed tiger. He also found in a frozen, sandy clay layer, complete trees of ''Alnus fruticosa'' fifteen feet in length, with leaves and cones adhering. This proved that during the mammoth period tree-vegetation had reached the seventy-fourth degree of latitude, three degrees farther north than it is found at the present time.
''The "perpetual ice,"'' Baron Toll asserts, ''is not due to the accumulation of snow, but must be considered as originating from the ice during the glacial period, representing, in fact, remains of the old ice-cap. His account of the islands, their geological formation, natural history, etc., is extremely interesting, more especially with regard to those great masses of buried ice, in which have been found in incredible quantities the bones and tusks and indeed whole skeletons of the mammoth, rhinoceros, and even the musk-ox, and in such a wonderful state of preservation that the tusks so found cannot be distinguished from the very best and purest ivory.''

References

★ Albert Hastings Markham, ''Arctic Exploration'', 1895

★ A. Bunge & E. Von Toll, ''The Expedition to the New Siberian Islands and the Jana country, equipped by the Imperial Academy of Sciences'', 1887